Gates

A poem

started this in the terminal and wasn’t planning on writing anything. just watching. that’s usually how it starts for me.I stop trying to write and just watch,and something cracks open anyway. haven’t written poetry in a long time.years, maybe.gave it up when everything else got given up too.but sitting there, watching a hundred people disappear into their phones,forty-two years old,doing the math on how much time i’ve actually got left in this thing . it felt right.felt like the only honest way to say it.so here it is.

---

this thing i walk around in
won’t last
and nobody tells you
that at twenty
and forty-two is
strange;
it’s old enough
to count
backwards and
old enough to
see the years
of performing
like a puppet on a string
with pennies for money
just to get through
another day;
one day you look
at the reflection and
finally check if you like
the character staring back
and you can’t call a friend
because everyone is using LLM’s
looking for an answer to something
they already have,
which is time,
just wasting it
in a different play
and the gate agent
calls a name
that isn’t mine
and i still flinch,
still look up,
like some part of me
is waiting
to be chosen
for something

i think about the pilot
somewhere behind that door
who’s never met me
and gets to decide
if i live or die
today
and i’m fine with that,
more fine than i should be,
because at least
that’s a decision
somebody’s making
on purpose
nobody in this terminal
is really here
they’re all
somewhere in the glass,
thumbs moving,
feeding a machine
that doesn’t feed back;

everyone here
is a drone,
i look around
and see it clear now —
heads down,
like something underwater;
a man eats a breakfast sandwhich
out of a paper bag,
grease on his fingers,
eyes on a screen,
not tasting a single bite
of the only thing
his body actually asked for
today;

nobody’s talking
not really;
families sitting three feet apart
saying nothing,
saying everything
to strangers instead;
even the kids
aren’t playing and
that’s the part that gets me
a kid, maybe six,
sitting next to his dad,
both of them
staring down
at their phones,
no toys,
no games,
no noise,
just two heads bowed
like they’re praying
to different gods;

i used to build blanket forts
with my daughter.
now i wonder
if she’ll remember that
or just remember
me, on my phone,
same as everyone else,
same as this whole
dying species
too scared
to sit in a room
without something
to look at
besides each other;
we are all just meat
learning to sit still,
meat that files taxes,
meat that says sorry, after you
at the coffee kiosk,
meat performing this life
while the meat inside it
screams;
never becoming anyone
never going anywhere
just losing the parts of yourself
that were never really there
to begin with —
the job title,
the ring,
the six-pack you had at twenty-five,
the idea that somebody
was coming to save you
from this thing i
walk around in

the woman next to me
is watching something
she’s laughing
at a fiction,
while the real thing —
me, her, all of us,
rotting in real time
in a chair
gets no smiles at all
and I’m no better.
i’m just doing it
on this labtop
which doesn’t make me
special,
just slower
to disappear

final boarding.
they always say it twice,
like the first time
we didn’t believe them
i don’t move yet,
got maybe
thirty more years
of not moving yet
left in me,
might as well
get good at it

Maybe you’ve felt it too. The rot. Not metaphorical .The version of yourself you trot out for an algorithm that doesn’t know your name and wouldn’t care if it did.

That’s what Something to Bury is for.

There’s a paid tier with honest parts. The too-much parts sometimes. And a ton of goodies as I figure this out.